The transport protocol known as Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) has been performing well for the past two decades as the de-facto transport protocol for reliable data delivery over the Internet. Although the algorithms used by TCP were designed to promote stability, reliability, and fairness on the Internet, these same algorithms lead to reduced TCP performance in the presence of certain conditions along the end-to-end path between the communicating systems. These characteristics, which include large bandwidth, large delay, and/or significant loss-rate, are becoming more common in today's Internet. Although the basic algorithms used by TCP have been modified over the years, significant change to these algorithms is unlikely, since there is such a large installed base of systems which use TCP. Therefore, a need exists for these and other problems to be addressed.